Beginning in my youth I've been compelled to adore and bow before that tree of trees. By some force of nature, I'd watch it slowly dry out until I was forced to toss it on the bonfire at the skating rink, where it burst out a final, merciful gust of warmth. "O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree How lovely are thy branches! O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree How lovely are thy branches..." ...etc...
Seriously? You haven't even figured out how to correctly worship the tree in your house every Christmas? I've heard it all now.... Where's that pie-in-face emoji when I need it?
I decided to do another round of hill repeats in the gentle snow. The warmup part wasn't much fun but by the time I got some body heat generated they were OK even if my heart wasn't really in it. I think I'm going to try with a different hill, the one I've been using is kinda boring.
Went for a quick ski with the dog. Trying to improve my skate-skiing but it's going to take some time to build up a different set of muscles.
Phew. I was getting concerned there. At least it's agreed upon that following the opening of Christmas offerings, an effigy of Ishtar is burned prior to the Christmas feast.
Don't be silly! All Hallows Eve follows from the previous evening's midnight mass, with a reading from the Necronomicon and the drawing of the salt iconographies. I imagine this is what the anti-Christmas people think all the other Christians do.
Either way, a dude with a chainsaw for an arm is going to show up at some point and it'll have been bad news for everyone already when he does.
Hey, I think I saw that dude. He was front man for a progressive street band in Van Nuys, luring tourists with holiday cheer for contributions.
So you're... too Christmassy but also not Christmassy enough / Christmassy in the wrong way? Too liberal for the Conservatives and too Conservative for the Liberals.
Goal pace repeats today. It warmed up a bit from earlier in the week so I didn't even need a layer under my outer jersey, which was nice. I really wasn't sure how well I'd do today but managed to get all the goal pace repeats done and even shaved a bit off my personal best in the "Magic Mile". So that was nice.
More rain today. I notionally had my Speed Repeats scheduled for today (rescheduled from earlier in the week when it was cold and snowy). After goal pace repeats yesterday I really don't feel like speed repeats today, and that's without considering the rain and forecast 40mph wind gusts later on. Speed repeats are hard enough without gusting headwinds. I may do them tomorrow but am increasingly tempted to just scratch that workout and do something else entirely. I don't want to abandon the plan but the speed repeats are getting silly - each repeat is half a mile at a "challenging pace" (which is 30s/mile faster than my goal pace), then 3 minutes walking for recovery. The next workout contains 12 repeats and next week's session is 14 repeats. Short of driving to town and running laps of the park I don't really have much access to a half-mile stretch that doesn't contain hills that leave me needing to drop the pace so I find them increasingly tiring and, frankly, increasingly tedious. I hate to scratch them because I can see how much difference the workout has made so far - I'm on week 8 and the difference is remarkable - but they are just so so repetitive. Maybe if I can one set of them I'll feel more motivated next week - it's still only a week since my last "long easy run" that turned into a milestone personal best so perhaps my system still isn't fully recovered from that yet.
I was still suffering from a severe motivational deficiency today so decided not to do speed repeats. I kicked that out to tomorrow and brought forward the hill repeats. That means I now have two sets of speed repeats this coming week - 12 on Monday and 14 on Wednesday. I can hardly wait....